The Times of India News Service

NEW DELHI: The rain gods are smiling on India once again this year. The meteorological department is forecasting normal monsoon for the 13th consecutive year.

The south-west monsoon has already arrived over the south Andaman Sea at its normal date on May 15. And so far, it is maintaining its scheduled advance over the Bay of Bengal and north Andaman Sea and is likely to reach Delhi by June 29, meteorological department director-general R R Kelkar, announced on Thursday.

The department is offering a more advanced model for prediction this time. The margin of error has been reduced with four of the 16 forecast parameters being modified. These new parameters are more closely linked to the actual monsoon rainfall and statistical error has, therefore, been limited to four per cent as against 10 per cent in the previous years.

The parameters the Met office uses for making the monsoon forecast include regional as well as global factors, such as pressures over the Arabian Sea, southern Indian Ocean, Himalayan snow, Eurasian snow as also the El Nino effect for the current year as well as previous year. Kelkar said the date for the entry of monsoon into the country can be predicted, but not its progression.

While offering dates of the monsoon's progress, Kelkar cautioned that the progression depended on many other factors including day-to-day weather conditions. This means that the parched land of Gujarat may have to wait for over a fortnight more and Rajasthan over a month before rains provide the much-needed succour.

But Kelkar cautioned that this does not mean an end these two western states' misery since rainfall will not be evenly distributed. ``It is difficult to make comparisons. Some pockets remain deficient,'' he said.

But as a whole, rainfall during four months, June through to September, across the country is likely to be 99 per cent of its average of 88 cm with an estimated model error of (plus-minus) four per cent. This overall average would be more than last year's actual rainfall of 96 per cent.

On the basis of three broad homogeneous regions of India, the Met department says rainfall will be 102 per cent of its long period average over North-west India, 98 per cent over the peninsula and 100 per cent over the North-east.